


Keep Your Friends Close (And Destroyed Loved Ones Closer)

by Ausphin



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Memory Loss, Other, Poor Davenport, Psychological Trauma, Spoilers, Stolen Century Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 05:22:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11373426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ausphin/pseuds/Ausphin
Summary: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR EP66 AND THE STOLEN CENTURY-----At least twice a week Lucretia got impact reports. The injuries, fatalities, destruction wrought from the Grand Relics. Counties, countries, continents in constant turmoil. Where the Bureau was burning the midnight oil and she would find herself slumped against her desk in the wee hours. But that became easy.What’s harder is the days of silence.-----Mini fic about Lucretia and Davenport during bureau downtime.





	Keep Your Friends Close (And Destroyed Loved Ones Closer)

At least twice a week Lucretia got impact reports. The injuries, fatalities, destruction wrought from the Grand Relics. Counties, countries, continents in constant turmoil. Where the Bureau was burning the midnight oil and she would find herself slumped against her desk in the wee hours. But that became easy.

What’s harder is the days of silence. The days where reclaimers, seekers, regulators are off on their respective missions and she just has to wait. When it’s been weeks since specific Relics have resurfaced and she has to face something worse than numbers, her own imagination. Magic of untold power with silence surrounding it? The idea of whole cities desecrated, doomed because an artifact happened to come within a 50-mile radius.

What Lucretia hates more is the fact that the silence hit her hardest because it left her with no distraction from Davenport. One of her dearest friends in his darkest state. On his best days, he’s been reduced to near-monosyllable words and thinking only about his surroundings, a shade of the former captain. When his mind is foggiest he’s listless, pacing near the corner of the room murmuring mindlessly.

Today is one of the worse.

Following a jittery path that doesn’t make sense to Lucretia , he stumbles suddenly into a filecabinet in the corner and sends papers scattering. His muttering pitches up as he rights himself and tries to go back to pacing but the debris have covered whatever mental tracks he’s following. “Davenport! I can’t-” he yelps in a panic as he drops down to shove aside the pages but fixates on the drawings instead. “I’m… Daven-“

Davenport slumps and so does Lucretia's arm after releasing the sleep spell. “I’m sorry. I got you into this mess, the smallest mercy is to temporarily let you out of it.”

She rises and makes her way over to him. The pages he’d knocked aside were some that she’d deemed unnecessary to wipe; a pressed leaf from one of the first planes, doodles from their adventures, a poster of the Tesseralia Losers, quotes from Taako’s book of aphorisms. 

When she lifts Davenport onto the couch, she sees one more sheet caught in his grip. Gently tugging it loose, the recognized handwriting sends a sharp pang through her chest, almost as much as the contents of it. The writing is shaky and untyped, like it was added a few years after by hand as an apathetic afterthought.

_“‘A single death is a tragedy. A million is a statistic.’ – Taako from TV”_

Fighting the urge to ball the paper up again, she slaps it onto her desk harder than necessary and turns away in shock. “This is what I saved him from,” she hisses, dragging a hand through her hair. “This is what I saved them all from.”

Lucretia's not sure how long she stands there before Davenport starts to jolt against the chair. She steps over to him and sees his face twisted into a snarl. “ _Haven’t we earned a little wrath?!_ ”

She recoils, not recognizing the words from that trial years and planes ago. “Davenport, I’m sorry. I-“

“Davenport? Daven... port?! I’m….” The words flow slower now, thickened with drowsiness as she slowly realizes he was sleep-talking.

Hovering a hand over him, she hesitates and decides not to touch him. Every moment not awake is a respite for him. "I'm so sorry, my friend. You absolutely have earned it."

Staring back at the quote on her desk, she gets seized with a sudden rage and tears off the source, rips until Taako’s name is a tiny shred.

-=-=-=

The next day, no one questions her new poster. The bright red ink of her own revisions.

_‘One death is a tragedy. A million is a FUCKING TRAVESTY.’_


End file.
